The study of Christian Science enables us to understand the admonition to be found in Isaiah (2:22), "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" This Science points out the necessity of viewing all existence from a spiritual standpoint, in accordance with the record of creation contained in the first chapter of Genesis, where we read that God created man and saw that he was good. It discloses the falsity of the record in the second chapter, where man is described as having been created from dust and as having had the breath of life breathed into his nostrils.
Breathing in its true sense is inspiration, the taking in and giving out of good thoughts, and this is always perfectly balanced. No pulmonary belief, congestion, constriction, obstruction, can ever touch this true sense of breathing. Paul declared that it is God who "giveth to all life, and breath, and all things" (Acts 17:25). God is Love, the infinite Giver of all that is good. It is easy to see, therefore, that everything given to man, Mind's idea, must be in abundant measure and must also be entirely mental and spiritual. Limitation, frustration, tightness, hardness, are never the gifts of Love, hence never belong to spiritual man.
Breathing is well expressed in gratitude for all that Christian Science reveals regarding God and His ideas, gratitude that Life is God, never in any way or at any time dependent upon matter. The occupants of a home or the promoters of a business consciously demonstrate Christian Science when they understand that all ideas work together harmoniously, co-ordinating and co-operating, each one doing the work allotted to it by God, divine Principle. The inspiration which comes from this demonstration may be likened to the breathing in and out which Mary Baker Eddy identifies with Christian Science in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany." There she writes (p. 195): "Christian Science is at length learned to be no miserable piece of ideal legerdemain, by which we poor mortals expect to live and die, but a deep-drawn breath fresh from God, by whom and in whom man lives, moves, and has deathless being." The breath of the Christian Science movement is the inspiration which comes through the acceptance and demonstration of the truth of being by its membership.
